Abortion

Smores said:
I'm sure these same people take on as much responsibility to protect poor starving children because not doing so would be a decision to end a life.

They wouldn't only care about life in the womb that would be ludicrous.
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I'm not sure that argument holds, at least not from a pro-life point of view?

If I was about to murder an infant and you objected to it, the responsibility wouldn't then be on you to ensure the infant has a healthy or happy life, nor would not doing so make you a hypocrite. To you the desire to stop the infant being killed would likely be a fundamental moral issue that doesn't require further thought, nor justification in terms of what you do to help starving children elsewhere.

From a pro-life point of view (which I disagree with) abortion comes down to the same fundamental question as that hypothetical. Is murdering a child morally acceptable? As such I don't really know what people expect them to say when asked "well, what will you do to take care of the child after it's born?" or "well, what do you do to help starving children elsewhere?" Those questions come from a moral and ethical position so far from where they're at that it wouldn't even make sense to them.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Abortion is an abhorrent crime and has absolutely nothing to do with women's rights. This is such a nonsense argument. It is about the protection of human life and your only argument against abortion would be that an unborn baby is not developed enough to be worth protecting. Again nonsense in my opinion but at least it's a point you could defend.
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Hypothetical situation for you..

A man is driving a truck down a freeway and crashes into a car being driven by a woman. The woman dies instantly. It later turns out that the woman is pregnant with twins. In court, how many manslaughter counts should the truck driver be charged with?
 
Green_Red said:
Hypothetical situation for you..

A man is driving a truck down a freeway and crashes into a car being driven by a woman. The woman dies instantly. It later turns out that the woman is pregnant with twins. In court, how many manslaughter counts should the truck driver be charged with?
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Out of curiosity, what says the law now?
 
carvajal said:
People give more importance to the rights over the woman's body than to the simple fact of not eliminating a perfectly viable life.
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I love this 'people giving importance to the rights over the woman's body' as if it was a piece of property that people are arguing over.

Women HAVE rights to their own bodies and they have the FREEDOM to exercise those rights.

Foetuses shouldn't get full human rights, until they become fully, viably human. Until that moment, the rights of those who are fully, viably human must take precedence.
 
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nickm said:
Foetuses shouldn't get full human rights, until they become fully, viably human. Until that moment, the rights of those who are fully, viably human must take precedence.
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So are they only a percentage or fraction of a human? can we charge someone with 2 x 1/4 murder?
 
Cheesy said:
Yeah I'm intrigued by this. And whether it depends on the advanced stage of the pregnancy.
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The law in the UK at least, is that a person isnt lawfully alive until they have taken their first breath.

How can you be charged with killing something that isnt considered alive yet...
 
Carolina Red said:
Literally semantics.

You are your brain. If your brain is gone, you are gone.

Cardiopulmonary death leads to brain death. The final state is brain death. That’s when you’re gone.

Also, I’ve now spoken to my wife and another of her nursing colleagues. I can go through the entire ICU if you’d like. I’ve got a feeling I’m going to get the same answers.
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Knock yourself out. You’re still wrong. So long as the heart is still pumping oxygenated blood around the body, there’s not a doctor on the planet that would certify death.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Knock yourself out. You’re still wrong. So long as the heart is still pumping oxygenated blood around the body, there’s not a doctor on the planet that would certify death.
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Not even after a angio where they've seen irreversible fatal damage to the brain?
 
Ødegaard said:
Was thinking wherever he was.



Thanks.
The question is hard. Very hard. I think if I had to pick one I'd say 1. But wouldn't be sure enough to argue it.
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That is also a dilemma for pro-lifers because if you say 1, then youre admitting that unborn babies have no rights, or at least not a level of rights equal to a person that has been born. Its a toughie and moves the debate away from abortion and onto the rights extended to the unborn. Which is where the debate should be.
 
Green_Red said:
That is also a dilemma for pro-lifers because if you say 1, then youre admitting that unborn babies have no rights, or at least not a level of rights equal to a person that has been born. Its a toughie and moves the debate away from abortion and onto the rights extended to the unborn. Which is where the debate should be.
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Yeah.
Mind I'm for the right to have abortions as I think now. But when in the pregnancy that should be removed is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around, and I'm damn glad it's not a issue I have to think about and have a impactfull decision on.
 
Ødegaard said:
Not even after a angio where they've seen irreversible fatal damage to the brain?
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Not even.

Like I said when I first responded, this is a pedantic point. But nobody is technically dead while their heart is still beating. No matter how little brain function they have.

And I get that this makes it hard for people to let someone go when it comes to organ transplants but that’s just the way it is. You can permanently lose cognition/consciousness yet still live on. Just like that kid in GOSH whose parents wanted to ship him off to Italy for a miracle cure.

The rights and wrongs of artificially prolonging the life (and for how long?) of someone who has no meaningful brain function is a different discussion but artificially prolonged life is still legally defined as life.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Not even.

Like I said when I first responded, this is a pedantic point. But nobody is technically dead while their heart is still beating. No matter how little brain function they have.

And I get that this makes it hard for people to let someone go when it comes to organ transplants but that’s just the way it is. You can permanently lose cognition/consciousness yet still live on. Just like that kid in GOSH whose parents wanted to ship him off to Italy for a miracle cure.

The rights and wrongs of artificially prolonging the life (and for how long?) of someone who has no meaningful brain function is a different discussion but artificially prolonged life is still legally defined as life.
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I'll call myself pro-death then since I might need spare parts. :lol:
 
Ødegaard said:
Yeah.
Mind I'm for the right to have abortions as I think now. But when in the pregnancy that should be removed is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around, and I'm damn glad it's not a issue I have to think about and have a impactfull decision on.
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Personally I dont agree with abortion, but I dont believe that just because I dont agree with it that my point of view should be forced on other people by blocking their right to do what is right for their situation. We all have the right to make our own decisions, if someone makes a decision I dont agree with Im not going to bash the person and take the moral high ground. Whether you agree with something or not is irrelevant to whether people should have the right to make their own decisions. That goes for anything, abortion, gay marriage, burkhas, etc.

But youre right, the time limits need to be revised. The pro choicers would also largely agree with that. 18 or 22 weeks is far too long.
 
I’m pro-choice too but think that defining the precise point in gestation when abortion should/shouldn’t be allowed is incredibly difficult. You’re going to need a line in the sand but it will always seem a bit arbitrary.
 
So the foetus in a car crash thing... it varies between countries and in the US it varies between states. A lot of states will have something saying "the unlawful killing of a human being or foetus..." California for example defines murder as such with malice aforethought , I believe.

Where such specifity was not made, courts often had to try and interpret whether, when a criminal statute was made in the 1800s for example, did the legislature intend human being to include the unborn (one case of a guy beating up his ex wife when he found she got pregnant with her new boyfriend, intentionally forcing a termination, was held not to be murder as the foetus wasn't intended to be included under human in the statute. This is a while ago now and I forget the state).

So the law depending on the state might charge the driver with multiple homicides. But the criminal codes still distinguish human and foetus quite often.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Knock yourself out. You’re still wrong. So long as the heart is still pumping oxygenated blood around the body, there’s not a doctor on the planet that would certify death.
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Right...
Jahi McMath of Oakland, Calif., was declared brain-dead last month after experiencing an extremely rare complication from tonsil surgery. Jahi's family members have fought to keep their daughter on a ventilator, but a judge has ordered that the machine be turned off next week.

A person is considered brain-dead when he or she no longer has any neurological activity in the brain or brain stem — meaning no electrical impulses are being sent between brain cells. Doctors perform a number of tests to determine whether someone is brain-dead, one of which checks whether the individual can initiate his or her own breath, a very primitive reflex carried out by the brain stem, said Dr. Diana Greene-Chandos, an assistant professor of neurological surgery and neurology at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. "It's the last thing to go," Greene-Chandos said.

In the United States and many other countries, a person is legally dead if he or she permanently loses all brain activity (brain death) or all breathing and circulatory functions. In Jahi's case, three doctors have concluded that she is brain-dead.

However, the heart's intrinsic electrical system can keep the organ beating for a short time after a person becomes brain-dead — in fact, the heart can even beat outside the body, Greene-Chandos said. But without a ventilator to keep blood and oxygen moving, this beating would stop very quickly, usually in less than an hour, Greene-Chandos said.

With just a ventilator, some biological processes — including kidney and gastric functions — can continue for about a week, Greene-Chandos said.

Kenneth Goodman, director of the Bioethics Program at the University of Miami, stressed that such functions do not mean the person is alive. "If you're brain-dead, you're dead, but [with technology], we can make the body do some of the things it used to do when you were alive," Goodman said.
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https://www.livescience.com/42301-brain-death-body-alive.html

Life is intrinsically tied to the brain.

A human life doesn’t exist without the cerebrum, as argued by the medical professionals trying to have anenchephalic infants declared dead.

I stand by my previous assertion regarding abortion and when life begins. There’s no human life without the necessary brain structures to necessitate human thought/cognitive awareness. Abortion performed before that stage doesn’t affect “life” whatsoever.
 
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Smores said:
I'm sure these same people take on as much responsibility to protect poor starving children because not doing so would be a decision to end a life.

They wouldn't only care about life in the womb that would be ludicrous.
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Of course they do. They feed the starving and cure the sick on their nights off. And fight womens rights on the weekends.
 
Carolina Red said:
Right...

https://www.livescience.com/42301-brain-death-body-alive.html

Life is intrinsically tied to the brain.

A human life doesn’t exist without the cerebrum, as argued by the medical professionals trying to have anenchephalic infants declared dead.

I stand by my previous assertion regarding abortion and when life begins. There’s no human life without the necessary brain structures to necessitate human thought/cognitive awareness. Abortion performed before that stage doesn’t affect “life” whatsoever.
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Scientifically there are seven characteristics of a living (live) organism, none of which are existing with the cerebrum and I'm very unsure of the argument you are promoting. I can see you've put a lot of reasoning into this and argued your point but I've looked for what science says and to my mind we're discussing the beginning of and development of life, not the end of it.
 
oates said:
Scientifically there are seven characteristics of a living (live) organism, none of which are existing with the cerebrum and I'm very unsure of the argument you are promoting. I can see you've put a lot of reasoning into this and argued your point but I've looked for what science says and to my mind we're discussing the beginning of and development of life, not the end of it.
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Looking at when life ends, you can turn that around and apply it to when life begins. “Death” is the non-existence of life, so essentially you’re dead before and after you’ve been alive.

We’re talking about this in the context of human life. If your cerebrum has been obliterated, you no longer exist. Sure, your body might carry out basic functions, but you are dead.
 
oates said:
Scientifically there are seven characteristics of a living (live) organism, none of which are existing with the cerebrum and I'm very unsure of the argument you are promoting. I can see you've put a lot of reasoning into this and argued your point but I've looked for what science says and to my mind we're discussing the beginning of and development of life, not the end of it.
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Human life.

A phoetus is as alive as a toumor.
 
Carolina Red said:
Looking at when life ends, you can turn that around and apply it to when life begins. “Death” is the non-existence of life, so essentially you’re dead before and after you’ve been alive.

We’re talking about this in the context of human life. If your cerebrum has been obliterated, you no longer exist. Sure, your body might carry out basic functions, but you are dead.
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Yes, I understand that is what you have been arguing but it seems to have little to do with the scientific facts that life begins at conception because the fetus satifies the criteria.
George Owen said:
Human life.

A phoetus is as alive as a toumor.
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Not very scientific in my opinion, not helpful language either really is it?
 
Argentina voting full free abortion today!! Good luck!!

(They already have legal abortion for rape and endangered mother situations, but illegal Abortions still kill too many women)
 
Carolina Red said:
Right...

https://www.livescience.com/42301-brain-death-body-alive.html

Life is intrinsically tied to the brain.

A human life doesn’t exist without the cerebrum, as argued by the medical professionals trying to have anenchephalic infants declared dead.

I stand by my previous assertion regarding abortion and when life begins. There’s no human life without the necessary brain structures to necessitate human thought/cognitive awareness. Abortion performed before that stage doesn’t affect “life” whatsoever.
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Well you're almost getting into a philosophical discussion now. What is consciousness and when does it first occur? Does a baby really demonstrate human thoughts/cognitive awareness at any point in utero? And if it does, when does that happen? 10 weeks? 20? 30? That's only a step beyond the whole debate about how we define "life" and when exactly it is first present.

Anyway, as I said, I'm on your side of the debate. I just disagree that focussing on the structural development of the brain gives us any kind of precise cut-off for when we are/aren't ending a life. It's all shades of grey (no pun intended).
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Well you're almost getting into a philosophical discussion now. What is consciousness and when does it first occur? Does a baby really demonstrate human thoughts/cognitive awareness at any point in utero? And if it does, when does that happen? 10 weeks? 20? 30? That's only a step beyond the whole debate about how we define "life" and when exactly it is first present.

Anyway, as I said, I'm on your side of the debate. I just disagree that focussing on the structural development of the brain gives us any kind of precise cut-off for when we are/aren't ending a life. It's all shades of grey (no pun intended).
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I always thought "life" was not really the accurate term for this debate. After all its not really "life" that is being debated here but "human life" or more apt "human consciousness". I mean an ant is "life" but not even PETA concerns itself with people stepping on ants. Basically I think the two systems mentioned in this thread that offer meaningful discussion could be termed "viable human life" (people arguing abortion should be allowed up until the point that life could exist outside the mother's womb) or "human consciousness" (which is based around human brain and functioning nervous).

Either way we have to get past the confusing and misplaced debate about "life" because that's not really what abortion debate is about.

So from a philosophical perspective, I don't think "life" is really the best term to be debated here and hence why I think Carolina's angle is more appropriate to be talking about brain functionality because consciousness can't exist without a functioning brain and nervous system (the entire nervous system is important to human consciousness not just the brain btw (see Damasio,et al).

Trying to reduce everything to debate about "life" (like arguing that technically doctors don't call someone dead until heart, etc) really just obfuscates and confuses the issue rather than advancing the discussion into meaningful territory.
 
User 72192 said:
As many people on here I think the most reasonable way to distinguish between something that should be punishable and something that shouldn't be is the line we draw between life and a hand of cells that could once become alive. This line should be the most important indicator. Other circumstances, such as illnesses, dangers for the carrying mother, rape etc. should lead to a situation in which the woman alone should be guided by medical professionals to decide whether to give birth to said child, or not, no matter the stage of the pregnancy.
In any case, abortions shouldn't be done without serious education by a competent doctor who's not only focussing on the biological issues but also the ethical side.
Op quoted a post where someone was talking about the government funding pro abortion campagains, if I understand correctly. I think if you're promoting something which is reasonable and puts every right of mother/father/child into an assessment which accounts every aspect of the unique case, government funding is just fine. What's very important to me is to promote the rights of every affected individual and not the society's, churches', religion's or whatever.
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Well I see what you mean about a 'hand' of cells but the development is really very quick. At about 22 days the cardiovascular system is working and using its own blood, not the mothers so it is quite distinct and a heartbeat can be detected. At about 36 days facial features have begun to form and between 36 days and 42 electrical brain activity can actually be detected. It isn't a 'hand' of cells for very long in those terms.
 
User 72192 said:
I'm not entirely sure why "viable human life", so life that's able to exist outside of the mothers womb, should be the relevant indicator, to be honest. Babies are able to survive without assistance after birth for how long? Some hours? Why is this subsantially more worth saving than a sick child that's in need of medical care and would die without help in minutes or an underdeveloped yet alive baby?

The other mentioned indicator which you named is "human consciousness". Which is in one way or another connected to the debate about life (in this context). At least from what I know, this is one of the most important aspects to measure whether something is human life or not. So I guess it's still connected to the general discussion about when life starts, it's mainly one of the subaspects to categorize life.

Survivability should in my personal opinion never be the most important category. It's vague and it reminds me of rudimentary aspects of social Darwinism (although I know this is not meant here, but it shares similarities). The connecting factor should be human dignity, which every human has. Which is why I still think the debate about when human life starts is a very important part of the whole discussion.
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I only brought up viability because people were discussing it earlier. The beginning of human life is a valid point to discuss because its far more relevant than "life".

For me human life requires brain and nervous system development so that is the best place to start
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
I always thought "life" was not really the accurate term for this debate. After all its not really "life" that is being debated here but "human life" or more apt "human consciousness". I mean an ant is "life" but not even PETA concerns itself with people stepping on ants. Basically I think the two systems mentioned in this thread that offer meaningful discussion could be termed "viable human life" (people arguing abortion should be allowed up until the point that life could exist outside the mother's womb) or "human consciousness" (which is based around human brain and functioning nervous).

Either way we have to get past the confusing and misplaced debate about "life" because that's not really what abortion debate is about.

So from a philosophical perspective, I don't think "life" is really the best term to be debated here and hence why I think Carolina's angle is more appropriate to be talking about brain functionality because consciousness can't exist without a functioning brain and nervous system (the entire nervous system is important to human consciousness not just the brain btw (see Damasio,et al).

Trying to reduce everything to debate about "life" (like arguing that technically doctors don't call someone dead until heart, etc) really just obfuscates and confuses the issue rather than advancing the discussion into meaningful territory.
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Well said
 
What could be less dignified than forcing a woman to bear a child against her will?
 
oneniltothearsenal said:
I only brought up viability because people were discussing it earlier. The beginning of human life is a valid point to discuss because its far more relevant than "life".

For me human life requires brain and nervous system development so that is the best place to start
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I use the phase "fully viably human" but I admit I have no immediate definition of that. However, I do think it is broader than survivability.
 
sullydnl said:
I'm not sure that argument holds, at least not from a pro-life point of view?

If I was about to murder an infant and you objected to it, the responsibility wouldn't then be on you to ensure the infant has a healthy or happy life, nor would not doing so make you a hypocrite. To you the desire to stop the infant being killed would likely be a fundamental moral issue that doesn't require further thought, nor justification in terms of what you do to help starving children elsewhere.

From a pro-life point of view (which I disagree with) abortion comes down to the same fundamental question as that hypothetical. Is murdering a child morally acceptable? As such I don't really know what people expect them to say when asked "well, what will you do to take care of the child after it's born?" or "well, what do you do to help starving children elsewhere?" Those questions come from a moral and ethical position so far from where they're at that it wouldn't even make sense to them.
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Exactly.
 
User 72192 said:
Yes, it's hard to draw the line, very true. I think we have to accept the imperfectness of human nature and that this very nature will lead to unjust decisions, no matter how much we want to get it right.
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It isn't really something you can just arbitrarily apply. At the point of conception it has human cells, it is human and without sickness or disease, miscarriage or some sort of external interference it will continue to develop. The fetus doesn't become more human, there is no point after conception when it is only half human or almost human, it just is, human.

I'm not vehemently 'ProLife', I struggle with these ideas but if we keep things scientifically factual then we aren't making up facts to suit ourselves.
 
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